Leslie Kong died suddenly in August 1971, and the Maytals lost their most important producer. Toots Hibbert kept writing. Chris Blackwell’s Island Records — already home to Bob Marley & The Wailers — signed the group, and in 1972 the billing changed from the Maytals to Toots and the Maytals: Toots the frontman, the Maytals the band behind him, as bassist Jackie Jackson later explained in a Kool 97 FM interview cited by Wikipedia.
The album
Funky Kingston was cut at Dynamic Sounds in Kingston and mixed in London, the Guardian obituary records. The title track — part soul shout, part rock-steady swagger — became an anthem on both sides of the Atlantic. The Associated Press listed it among the songs that made reggae an international movement. Island reissued an expanded version for the American market in 1975; Rolling Stone later placed the set on its list of the 500 greatest albums.
The band sound
Jackson, Paul Douglas, Hux Brown and Radcliffe Bryan — the core of the “patented Maytals sound,” as Reggae Vibes would call it — locked the rhythms that Hibbert rode like a soul singer at a gospel revival. The Guardian’s Katz noted that in the years before Marley’s global breakthrough, Hibbert “was one of the main global faces of reggae music — or at least of its predecessors, ska and rock steady.” Funky Kingston is where that face turns fully toward the rock audience Island was cultivating.
Why it matters
Island gave the Maytals the same infrastructure Marley would use to conquer stadiums. Funky Kingston is the hinge between Kong’s Kingston singles and the world-tour era.
Listen and dig deeper
- Play Funky Kingston in the Listen library. Browse Toots Hibbert and Toots & The Maytals.
- Previously: ‘Pressure Drop’ (1970). Next: ‘Reggae Got Soul’ (1975).
Sources: The Guardian — “Toots Hibbert obituary” (David Katz, Sep 12, 2020); Associated Press — “Toots Hibbert, beloved reggae star, dead at 77” (Sep 11, 2020); Wikipedia — Toots and the Maytals; Encyclopedia.com — Toots and the Maytals.
Editor’s note: This entry is part of the JamaicansMusic online museum — a career timeline assembled from the archive. It is dated to the era it documents; every claim is drawn from the linked sources.